In the period since the last general election, MoD civil servants have had a below inflation rise or no pay rise; two increments of pension contribution increases and now face threats to our terms and conditions such as leave and sick pay.
Elsewhere in the defence budget
One positive to come from this government is their transparency agenda. Members can now view themselves (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mod-finance-transparency-dataset) where, what and how much the government is spending of the defence budget externally.
Our union believes that before a single job is cut; before we accept continuing pay restraint; before any more of our pension is eroded and before any changes to our terms and conditions are implemented, the MoD must look at the spiralling costs of external defence spending.
24.5% increase in a year
The governments own figures do not lie. The MoD keeps on giving more and more money and more and more work to the private sector –
- Financial year 10-11 (Apr - Mar) - £5,015,349,851.55
- Financial year 11-12 (Apr - Mar) - £6,241,892,046.76
An independent audit of a contract in the MoD's procurement organisation - Defence Equipment and Support, based at Abbey Wood near Bristol - found a lack of scrutiny and competition and no attempt to use existing defence staff to undertake the work.
The audit into the 'framework agreement for technical support' in the DE&S's, which provides equipment and support to the frontline, found:
- "Project teams failed to submit business cases for mandated independent scrutiny and approval in over half of the cases reviewed."
- "A significant proportion of tasks were placed single source (75%) despite the default position being competition."
- "The required investigation into the use of internal resources for completion of the task was not fully completed in any of the tasks reviewed."
- "There was no mechanism to identify where the same skills were being consistently bought in to enable and inform reviews of in-house capacity/capability."
Political dogma from the Cabinet Office
In 2012, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude claimed the government was doing all it could to "address waste and increase scrutiny on government expenditure", adding: "We need to be able to show taxpayers that every penny we spend is being used efficiently and we must open up our books so people can see for themselves where their money is going."
Francis Maude is the same minister who has now ordered the attacks on our terms and conditions. Rather than attack low paid civil servants, why does Francis Maude not investigate the profligate external defence spending? The only answer can be that it is easier to blame public sector workers than go after multinational tax dodging corporations.
Last week, Rolls Royce, a major UK defence contractor, reported via their own annual report that they did not pay any corporation tax in the UK in 2012 despite making a £1.4 billion pre-tax profit.
Conclusion
Our union is sickened that since the SDSR announcement in October 2010 that announced the culling of 54,000 jobs, we have seen no evidence of how outputs are to be stopped or projects cancelled. Tens of thousands of staff have already gone and we now have huge skills shortages across the department.
On top of that we have had pay restraint, pension contribution increases and now an attack on our terms and conditions that have been fought for and built up through the years.
On 20 March, it is time to take action and to tell the government to examine their friends in the City; the casino bankers and the defence profiteers and that this government must listen to ordinary workers in Britain.
We know that members are finding it increasingly hard to make ends meet and that to lose money through strike action will be a difficult decision. However if we don’t make a stand, the Government will continue to walk all over us and we will lose even more as a consequence.
ALL OUT ON 20 MARCH – SAVE OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS
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